On April 18, 2013, I will deliver a free 2.5-hour workshop on intellectual property in plain English for business owners.

This workshop is organized by DigiBC, the Digital Media and Wireless Association of British Columbia.

As an attendee, you will walk away not only with a ton of useful information about what different areas of intellectual property can do to and for your business, but also with several tangible tools that will allow you to start building the IP strategy for your business.

If you are running a business and don’t have a clear and viable IP strategy, this is a workshop that you can’t afford to miss!

To attend, you must register at http://mincovlaw2013.eventbrite.com/.

Often, I get requests to draft a simple agreement whereby the business owner who paid or is about to pay for some content created specifically for that business would own copyright in what they pay for.

Just today, I got a call from an existing client. They hired a videographer to create videos for their business. Now the videographer is claiming that my client does not own copyright in the videos. However surprising this may be to most people, the videographer is correct, at least from the legal standpoint.

Unless there is an assignment of copyright in writing, the copyright remains with the person who created the work, in this case, the videos.

Often, the client’s situation does not justify hiring a lawyer to create a completely customized agreement.

So I decided to share the template that I developed as a result of many years of writing these agreements in different jurisdictions.

If you hired someone to create content for you or you are about to hire someone to create content for you and you don’t have a budget to document the transfer of intellectual property from your contractor to you, you should definitely check out these templates. They may not ideally fit your situation and are not offered as legal advice, but in my experience, they should take care of 90% of the situations that usually arise around such facts.

This is where you can download standard Content Creation and Copyright Assignment templates at a fraction of what it would cost you to have a lawyer draft a customized contract. Check out the previews and see for yourself that the level of details covered in these templates greatly exceeds anything that you can download for free on the Internet.

Hoping that this will be of value to you.

On February 13, 2013, I delivered a seminar on intellectual property at the New York Institute of Technology in Vancouver.

Great to see so many aspiring students with lit-up eyes who came to learn about IP.

As I’ve just mentioned, Mincov Law Corporation has just celebrated its first birthday.

Not only do I have tons of great friends among founders and co-founders of Vancouver tech startups, I know the challenges surrounding running a startup firsthand.

For many startups the cost of getting a trademark through a trademark agent may be prohibitive, so they end up without a trademark or with a poorly drafted trademark application.

I want to extend a helping hand and announce that throughout September of 2012 Mincov Law Corporation will be offering its most comprehensive trademark registration package valued at $3,500 + HST to any business that has been incorporated for less than 2 years in Canada for only…

Become the next , or for half the price in September!

I have been fighting against unauthorized use of other people’s music, software and movies for more than 18 years.

However, I also am very much aware of the ease with which one may download pretty much anything today – for free and often more useable compared to the legitimate copy (greetings, DVD menus and advertising).

Once you’ve been using a cracked or a ripped file without any issues, it is very difficult to force yourself to shell out hard earned money for something that would not result in any positive change in how we use the software, listen to the music or watch the films.

I also know that most people would prefer to own legitimate copies of the stuff they have on their computers if somehow miraculously they didn’t have to pay for it, at least to the extent that their user experience wouldn’t be worse off compared to what they’ve had with the file they leeched off a torrent.

Financial incentives are often more convincing than words.

This is why it is my pleasure to announce that starting September 1, 2012 every new client of Mincov Law Corporation will be receiving Anti-Piracy Reward Certificates.

The idea is simple:

1. become a client of Mincov Law Corporation;

2. receive valuable legal advice and outstanding customer service;

3. get a reward certificate;

4. buy legitimate software, music or movies;

5. receive a cheque from your lawyer.

The certificates may be regifted.

And think of it, doesn’t it sound great: “I just got my lawyer pay for my music”?

Please comment and share if you like the idea.